Quilly Has NOT Left The Building

Those of you who follow Quilly at quilldancer.com, and the one or two of you who bother with the Dudes at http://www.dude-n-dude.com, may have noticed that both sites have been crashing rather a lot lately. Like, now (2244 Pacific Standard Time, 31 Jan. 2011).

Both sites are hosted by DreamHost, a shared server used by a fair-sized community of folk (including the Q) because it’s inexpensive and, til recently, serviceable. In the past few days, though, as reported on their status blog, DreamHost has had a number of issues, most of them having to do with servers falling down and not getting back up.

Your Friendly Neighborhood Amoeba has had too much direct experience with people trying to do things on the cheap (no, don’t ask) to be thinking anything other than “well, you get what you pay for”. Like, a web hosting service that can’t afford the infrastructure to ward off the increasingly numerous and powerful internet parasites.

The Q and I are going to have to have a little talk. And if perchance you’re looking for a webhosting service, and this iteration of WordPress (no ads) isn’t sufficient for your needs, I’d avoid DreamHost if I were you. Pay more and get a service that’s likely to have what it takes to beat back the DoS hordes, my fellow Starship Troopers.